Re: comments and wishes

Claus Thoegersen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> The following comments refer to the ua version from June 15, and not
> the june 18 revision, because I guess that there are no differences
> between the 2 versions.
> 
> 3.5 dependent and independent user agents.
> Why make up a new word "independent user agents" for assistive
> technology? When this document hopefully will gain the status of an
> w3c recommendation it will be read by many people with little or know
> knowledge about assistive technology, and by using a nonstandard very
> brought term like dependent user agent, we do not better the
> understanding of the actual problems. Finally different places in the
> guidelines it is said rather clear how this requirement helps users of a
> certain type of assistive technology.

The idea of two types of user agents was suggested by Leonard Kasday in
an email sent to the WAI Coordination Group ([1] for those with Member
Access).
In his email, he refers to them as "Model A" and "Model B" user agents.
I didn't
think those terms would fly although I liked the concept very much and
wanted
to integrate the idea into the guidelines (although it has not yet been
used
as a means of organizing the guidelines). I'm sorry if the terms are
causing
more confusion than enlightenment. This may be because the theme is not
explored
much in the guidelines (although, as you say, some of the guidelines
mention
explicitly which groups of users are helped). 

Should this distinction (or just the terminology) not prove useful, we
can
strike it from the document. However, I had hoped to pursue it as a
first step
towards clarifying which guidelines applied to which type of user agent.
Of course,
this endeavor is based on the assumption that some guidelines are meant
to apply to some user agents and not others. Will this be the case? Can 
conformance be based in part on this distinction?

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-wai-cg/1998AprJun/0084.html
 
> The following sentense from 3.5 I think could be interpreted to suggest that
> independent agent developpers do not have to follow many of the
> guidelines since they deal with issues related to dependent user
> agents.
> 
> "most of the guidelines in this document apply to dependent user
> agents"

Good point. This must be cleared up. 

Thank you for your constructive comments. I look forward to further
discussions
on this topic.

 - Ian 

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) 
Tel/Fax: (212) 684-1814 
http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs

Received on Friday, 19 June 1998 13:04:14 UTC